Canon G16 White Balance Issue

[DENLASCUBA]

I have never used my G16 without strobes before as I normally use my S100 no strobes when diving with clients. I decided yesterday to use the G16 instead without strobes and manually white balance which I prefer over auto and correcting it post dive. Once I pass 10 meters and white balance the camera does not balance correctly it instead balances to a light red/pink, I then have to manually adjust the balance down one notch on the blue spectrum to get a clear balance. Has anyone else had this issue? Yes I did try auto but this setting is not a personal preference when without strobes so limit responses to exclude saying use auto.

 

[BluewaterPhoto]

Denla, I highly suggest shooting in RAW and adjusting in Lightroom, which just takes a moment and will probably give better results, is there a reason you don't want to do that?

Scott Gietler

 

[Dannybot]

The underwater photographer's cheer " RAW RAW RAW"

 

[daz88]

RAW is your friend. Take a gray card down with you and/or set it when you get to depth. You can use anything really to set the WB, the sand works great. but the best and easiest to adjust post dive. saves a lot of time having to set the WB every time conditions change during the dive where your time is limited.

 

[miketsp]

Another vote for RAW. I like to make sure I have something really white in the photo. My wife's BC has a little white plastic disk, cut from an ice-cream container, hanging from one of her d-rings. It just needs to be big enough to cover a few pixels.
If I take a picture of that at the same depth the adjustment is the same for other photos.

 

[PatW]

I always use RAW format followed with post processing with Lightroom.

It it is important to remember that white balance only does so much. Water absorbs light. It absorbs long wave length light like red light much faster than blue light. Water will absorb nearly 100 percent of the red light in the first 15'. We see things as red when an object reflects the red light. If you have a red object but no red light, that object will look black. In order to restore what we think of as natural color at depth, we have to take down a light source either strobes or flood lights.

I recall taking a shot of a queen angel against an apparently drab wall at about 80'. When I looked at the shot later, I was surprised to see that the wall was covered with insanely garish red and orange encrusting sponges that were revealed by my strobes.